Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES) [Now with more LR]

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Elenia
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1888
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 1:22 am
Location: London
Languages: English (N), Swedish (C1), French (Massively Atrophied) German (lowly beginner, somehow learnt to read)


Finnish?!
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=708
x 3280
Contact:

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Elenia » Sun Dec 31, 2017 8:23 pm

You are a shining star of inspiration!
0 x

User avatar
Yuurei
Green Belt
Posts: 266
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 8:57 am
Languages: German (N), English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Latin, Italian
Studying: Japanese, Chinese, Korean
Maintaining: French, Spanish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1721
x 590

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby Yuurei » Tue Jan 02, 2018 1:27 pm

明けましておめでとう!

New year, new month, new week... the perfect time for new goals and plans!

But first let's review the last week of 2017

Weekly Goals for Week 52 (2017) - All done \o/

French
*Read 30 pages [Le Chevalier Rouge]

Japanese
*Read 2 manga volumes [名探偵コナン Vol. 93-94]

Chinese
*Finish RB level S reader #13 (The Cricket)
*Study 2 chapters of CB level 1 reader #1 (Wrong, wrong, wrong!)
*Read 20 pages 3 chapters of Emma (MC level 1 reader) [Extensive reading]
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze; MC: Mandarin Companion

Korean
*Study I Hear Your Voice Substudy Anki deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]

Other stuff I did:
French: Watched 2 episodes of Grimm (S3 ep. 19-20).
Spanish: Watched 4 episodes of Buffy (S1 ep. 3-6).
Chinese:Started on chapter 3 of Wrong, wrong, wrong! (6/10 pages); Read chapter 4 of Emma.

Funny how having more time doesn't always translate to actually having more time - or so it feels. I had the time between Christmas and NYE off work and so should have had so much time, but I hardly got anything done - I barely managed to achieve the goals I set myself - but not much more, I didn't do anything else remotely productive, but I also didn't end up playing any of the video games I had been looking forward to (I ended up gaming for all of an hour over the whole holidays). Where on earth did all that time go?!

Hm, but well, I did enjoy myself, and I suppose that's the important thing.

Chinese
I started on 2 new Chinese graded readers last week - one intensively and one extensively. The transition to the Chinese breeze reader went well - the first couple of pages took a bit getting used to and were a bit more difficult the last couple of Rainbow Bridge readers - but definitely not as difficult as the first RB reader and the amount of unknown vocab is moderate and most of it is actually in the unknown (glossed) words. So, after 3 chapters, I can say that the difference in difficulty between the RB level S readers (150 characters) and the CB level 1 readers (300 characters) is definitely not as noticeable as one might think. The one thing that is challenging though is the audio. Hoo boy. That's something else. The audio comes in two versions "slow" and "normal", or, as I like to call them "fast" and "super fast". XD
No, I mean, if I'm being objective the "slow" one took a bit of getting used to, but does seem like a good speed to get used to, so I have no complaints there, but the "normal" one is just too fast, at least considering that this is basically an audio book. I mean, sure, maybe people speak this quickly when chatting excitedly, but you'd never find an audiobook at such speed in any language I know, I don't think. Or maybe it just seems like that to me? Way to bash my confidence. :lol: I've decided to go with the slow audio for my general studying, but once I finish a chapter I do try to follow the "normal" audio, since I'm sure that can only help my listening comprehension. Anyway, some research revealed that of the 6 CB level 1 readers, numbers 3-6 all had their audio slowed down significantly, only I happened to choose one of the two readers where that wasn't the case. :D
querido on Chinese Forums wrote:Here is their order of publication with the playing times of the audio fast/slow:

1. Wrong, wrong, wrong! :43/:55
2. I really want to find her :43/:55
3. Two children seeking... :54/1:29
4. Left and Right 1:18/1:51
5. Can I dance with you? :59/1:25
6. Whom do you like more? :53/1:30
They decided to slow down the recording speed for numbers 3-6, and #4 is noticeably the slowest.

Source: chinese-forums.com

As for extensive reading, I decided to start with the Mandarin Companion reader Emma after having some success with reading the sample chapter the week before last. The MC readers don't have audio and are thus best used for extensive reading, imo. Verdict after 4 chapters: Quite readable, but still somewhat difficult. Unfortunately, the story is somewhat more boring than the other readers...



Elenia wrote:You are a shining star of inspiration!

*blushes* I'm pretty sure I don't deserve that, but thank you! ^^#
But in fact, you're the person who inspired me to start this habit of setting weekly goals in my log, which has proven exceedingly helpful and so I'm immensely grateful to you. :)



Plans for 2018
I haven't really made any resolutions for 2018 - the most important thing for me this year will be to keep doing my weekly goals again. I don't mind too much if I fail a week here or there, as long as I can keep up the general habit and succeed most of the time (i.e. no dropping the ball completely - looking at you, 2017). So I guess that's my one and only resolution - everything else is flexible. :)

As for my general plans, I definitely want to make good progress in Chinese this year. I don't want to be too ambitious here, I'd be satisfied to reach the level of the higher level graded readers - say, CB & RB level 4 - for extensive reading, which should be no problem if I continue Chinese the way I have been, I think.

I also want to make adequate progress in Korean - ideally reaching a level where I can read children's book extensively by the end of the year. Unfortunately Korean does not offer an amazing curriculum of graded readers like Chinese, so I'm hoping for a combination of my Anki decks and reading some easier manga (coming soon, hopefully) to get me to that level. Fortunately learning through reading should be somewhat easier due to the lack of Chinese characters (not that I have anything against Chinese characters, but not knowing how to pronounce a word is always so frustrating - worse than not knowing the meaning imo XD). Still I'm sure there'll be lots of adjustments to my Korean learning strategy.

I've also been thinking these past few days that I'd really like to push my French to a higher level. These past couple of years I've been comfortably and complacently lounging at my C1-ish level, where I can basically do anything I care for - read novels, watch movies/TV shows, play video games, communicate without much strain when in France, etc... but it's all just very unpolished. When reading, I frequently encounter words and expressions that I don't know, when talking I have to talk around an embarassing amount of holes in my active vocab and let's not even talk about writing. I have lots of overly ambitious ideas of what to do about it - Tadoku, italki tutoring, NaNoWriMo to name a couple, but no definite plans yet (except for Tadoku, which is happening this January and I simply decided to join with French this time. Target: 2000 pages). There's also the question of where to take the time for all this, naturally.

As for Japanese, at the very least I want to maintain my current level this year, but ideally I'd like to keep making progress, of course. In fact, a little voice keeps whispering that I should totally aim for N1 in December, but so far I'm managing to keep it gagged and silent. :lol:

Aaand I've decided to try and maintain my Spanish as well this year, after completely ignoring it last year. I'm not particularly motivated to improve my Spanish right now, but I'd be sad to see it detoriate (any further, anyway =x), so I'm thinking a bit of Buffy (or comparable) each week and a book or two over the course of the year might be a good idea.

Regarding Latin, it's still on hold at the moment. Naturally I don't actually want to lose my Latin either, but my motivation for Latin is not really present atm and unfortunately it's not as easy to maintain as Spanish. Not to mention that I've alredy got 5 languages on my active list even without Latin, although previous experience showed that 4 is my upper limit. So yeah. =x

PSA concerning cookies:
After I unfortunately wasn't able to go to last year's gathering due to work commitments, I made plans for this year's gathering as soon as the registration opened, so now I'm signed up, have time off work, booked a flight and will definitely be there! And so it may be a year late, but of course I'll be bringing those promised cookies for all Finnish learners (past and present). :D



Weekly Goals for Week 1 (2018)

Chinese
*Study chapters 3-4 of CB level 1 reader #1 (Wrong, wrong, wrong!)
*Read chapters 5-7 of Emma (MC level 1 reader) [Extensive reading]
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze; MC: Mandarin Companion

Korean
*Study I Hear Your Voice Substudy Anki deck (at least 5 days)
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days)

French
*Tadoku: Read 300 pages

Japanese
*Read 1 manga volume

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV
7 x

User avatar
LunaMoonsilver
Green Belt
Posts: 379
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:09 pm
Location: Nottinghamshire, UK
Languages: English (N), German (C1), Mandarin Chinese (B1), Spanish (A2), Polish (A0)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17648
x 1345
Contact:

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue Jan 02, 2018 2:55 pm

Oh, wow, I know you said you didn't feel like you used a lot of time between Christmas and New Year, but looks like you got loads done! :D I think I'm going to have to borrow your weekly goals idea to make sure I keep on track like you're doing haha.

Happy 2018!
0 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

User avatar
Yuurei
Green Belt
Posts: 266
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 8:57 am
Languages: German (N), English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Latin, Italian
Studying: Japanese, Chinese, Korean
Maintaining: French, Spanish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1721
x 590

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby Yuurei » Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:44 pm

LunaMoonsilver wrote:Oh, wow, I know you said you didn't feel like you used a lot of time between Christmas and New Year, but looks like you got loads done! :D I think I'm going to have to borrow your weekly goals idea to make sure I keep on track like you're doing haha.

Happy 2018!

Happy 2018 to you as well! And welcome to the language logs section - I already bookmarked your log earlier and look forward to reading about your progress! (Your use of colors totally won me over :lol: )

As for how much I got done, I suppose I sounded more disppointed than I meant to, but there was, I think, no noticeable difference between last week and my usual weeks (where I work full-time), so I was wondering where my extra 40 hours went, is all. :D

I can totally recommend the weekly goals, especially if you're going for consistency, as you stated over in your log - I've never been as consistent in my learning as when I was using weekly goals. One tip for those goals though: Shoot low. Really low. Make it the lowest amount you would still feel somewhat satisfied with. The amount you could still (most likely) do, if you were to come down with a cold and be unexpectedly busy. This has several advantages:

1. Completing your goals will be almost effortless and thus you're much (much!) more likely to actually do them. And even though you think that you would do those few things anyway even if you didn't set them as goals, the fact that you do write them down will ensure that you do them. And so you complete your goals week after week and voilà - consitency has been attained.
2. Derived from 1.): Actually completing your goals will lead to a sense of accomplishment (and let's not kid ourselves - who doesn't like that?), which in turn will make you even more likely to accomplish the next week's goals as well. Rinse and repeat. :D
3. The goals represent a lower limit, not and upper limit and nothing stops you from doing more than your set goals - in fact easily finishing your goals before the end of the week will make it very likely that you feel motivated to do some more.
4. Get an extra dose of that sense of accomplishment for having done a lot more than your original goals.
5. If you do get slightly ill or unexpectedly busy, you've still got a pretty good chance of completing your goals.

Heh, I didn't actually mean to get carried away like this, but I could totally talk about this topic for hours (but I already created one wall of text today, so I'll stop here). :lol:
8 x

User avatar
LunaMoonsilver
Green Belt
Posts: 379
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:09 pm
Location: Nottinghamshire, UK
Languages: English (N), German (C1), Mandarin Chinese (B1), Spanish (A2), Polish (A0)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17648
x 1345
Contact:

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:51 pm

Yuurei wrote:I can totally recommend the weekly goals, especially if you're going for consistency, as you stated over in your log - I've never been as consistent in my learning as when I was using weekly goals. One tip for those goals though: Shoot low. Really low. Make it the lowest amount you would still feel somewhat satisfied with. The amount you could still (most likely) do, if you were to come down with a cold and be unexpectedly busy. This has several advantages:

1. Completing your goals will be almost effortless and thus you're much (much!) more likely to actually do them. And even though you think that you would do those few things anyway even if you didn't set them as goals, the fact that you do write them down will ensure that you do them. And so you complete your goals week after week and voilà - consitency has been attained.
2. Derived from 1.): Actually completing your goals will lead to a sense of accomplishment (and let's not kid ourselves - who doesn't like that?), which in turn will make you even more likely to accomplish the next week's goals as well. Rinse and repeat. :D
3. The goals represent a lower limit, not and upper limit and nothing stops you from doing more than your set goals - in fact easily finishing your goals before the end of the week will make it very likely that you feel motivated to do some more.
4. Get an extra dose of that sense of accomplishment for having done a lot more than your original goals.
5. If you do get slightly ill or unexpectedly busy, you've still got a pretty good chance of completing your goals.

Heh, I didn't actually mean to get carried away like this, but I could totally talk about this topic for hours (but I already created one wall of text today, so I'll stop here). :lol:


Ahh, no, this is awesome advice! I think I might have gone a little OTT this week (it being the first and all) but when I look at my goals, there are very few rn that are active study time (like with a textbook) so after this week's panned out I'm gonna see how I feel (and likely lower everything a significant amount :lol: ).

But yeah, it's such a good method! And I like that idea of feeling better cause you did more--I definitely need to work on that one (instead of throwing away the whole idea because I did significantly less...).

Anyway, can't wait to see how you do this year! :D Gonna keep an eye on your log too; looks like you've got a good method for improving your Mandarin reading (though I am trying to keep my distance from Japanese a tiny bit ;) ).
0 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

User avatar
rdearman
Site Admin
Posts: 7231
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 4:18 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Languages: English (N)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1836
x 23122
Contact:

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby rdearman » Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:55 pm

WOOT! Cookies!(I'm sure I can set aside my diet for a couple of weeks, if I haven't already blown it off by then.)
0 x
: 0 / 150 Read 150 books in 2024

My YouTube Channel
The Autodidactic Podcast
My Author's Newsletter

I post on this forum with mobile devices, so excuse short msgs and typos.

User avatar
Brun Ugle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2273
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
x 5821
Contact:

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:20 pm

COOKIES!!!! I was supposed to be sticking to Spanish and German this year, but if there are going to be cookies......
0 x

User avatar
Elenia
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1888
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 1:22 am
Location: London
Languages: English (N), Swedish (C1), French (Massively Atrophied) German (lowly beginner, somehow learnt to read)


Finnish?!
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=708
x 3280
Contact:

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby Elenia » Thu Jan 04, 2018 5:28 pm

COOOKIES!

If I can make it I would like some cookies!!!
0 x

User avatar
Yuurei
Green Belt
Posts: 266
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 8:57 am
Languages: German (N), English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Latin, Italian
Studying: Japanese, Chinese, Korean
Maintaining: French, Spanish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1721
x 590

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby Yuurei » Fri Jan 05, 2018 10:21 am

Yuurei uses cookies. It is very effective. :lol:

rdearman wrote:WOOT! Cookies!(I'm sure I can set aside my diet for a couple of weeks, if I haven't already blown it off by then.)

I mean, far be it from me to tempt you away from your diet. I'll be happy to help out by withholding cookies from you. :twisted:

Brun Ugle wrote:COOKIES!!!! I was supposed to be sticking to Spanish and German this year, but if there are going to be cookies......

Obviously you will get cookies in either case, since it's not your fault that I bailed out on you guys last year. I can't really expect people to stll be learning Finnish. So no worries. ;)

Elenia wrote:COOOKIES!

If I can make it I would like some cookies!!!

Naturally! I really hope you can make it - I'd love to meet you!
1 x

User avatar
Brun Ugle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2273
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:48 pm
Location: Steinkjer, Norway
Languages: English (N), Norwegian (~C1/C2), Spanish (B1/B2), German (A2/B1?), Japanese (very rusty)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=11484
x 5821
Contact:

Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES)

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Jan 05, 2018 11:07 am

Yuurei wrote:Yuurei uses cookies. It is very effective. :lol:

Yes, it is.

Yuurei wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:COOKIES!!!! I was supposed to be sticking to Spanish and German this year, but if there are going to be cookies......

Obviously you will get cookies in either case, since it's not your fault that I bailed out on you guys last year. I can't really expect people to still be learning Finnish. So no worries. ;)

Wait! If I get cookies either way, what am I going to use as an excuse when I inevitably stray from the Spanish/German path?
2 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot], Tumlare and 2 guests